From 
Del.icio.us
Digg
Reddit
Facebook
StumbleUpon
TwitThis
When Vanderbilt University freshman Chelsea Gorman was raped near campus in the spring of 2007, her life was shattered. She told only her close friends about the ordeal and left school for the rest of the semester after she began suffering panic attacks, but by last March she was back in Nashville and putting her life together. Then she got a phone call from a friend. The story of her rape had been posted on the Internet.
"Chelsea Gorman Deserved It" was the title of a message posted on juicycampus.com, a popular website dedicated to anonymous gossip about college students. "Everyone thinks she's so sweet, but she got what she deserved," wrote the unnamed author of the post, who went on to express envy for her rapist. Suddenly the whole campus knew about the devastating attack, and Gorman's fellow students talked about it in front of her.
"That was probably the hardest part," she told ABC News earlier this year. "That something like this is considered gossip is disgusting."
Even more disgusting is how common stories like this have become. Cyberbullying of younger children, usually by other kids, is a familiar story; less so is the online harassment of college students and adults. The cowards who cloak themselves in digital anonymity to smear others are not only hurting their victims but also damaging the sense of trust important to us all, online and off. The effects can range from mere embarrassment to lost jobs to emotional trauma. Meanwhile, the creeps sitting at their keyboards are rarely held to account.
Online harassment is as old as the Web itself. But now it's being actively encouraged by websites that profit from sourceless vitriol. Perhaps the main offender is JuicyCampus, whose home page promises that "posts are totally, 100 percent anonymous." The website has become a clearinghouse for abuse, ranging from cruel insults and vicious rumors to the outing of gay and lesbian students and the harassment of racial and ethnic groups. How would you like to be the UCLA student who was recently branded "a stinky, ugly Jew … the most hated slut on campus"? JuicyCampus's frequently-asked-questions page—in addition to directing users to "IP cloaking" software to further mask their digital footprint—responds to "I'm offended!" with a flip "Sorry. Also, that's not a question."
The website covers 500 colleges and universities, and already there are a slew of trashy imitators, many targeting older adults. Among them is the site gossipreport.com, where "you can anonymously talk about anyone you want. Instead of creating a profile about yourself, you can create a profile about someone else." One post features the photo of an Ohio man along with the message "Watch out, ladies." The post accuses the man of spreading STDs and says he's "a manho who can't be faithful to no one."
Advertisement 
